FISHKILL >> A corrections officer at the state prison in Fishkill was attacked by an inmate this week and needed 22 stitches as result, the officer’s union said Wednesday.

The assault happened about 8:30 a.m. Monday at the medium-security Fishkill Correctional Facility, according to the New York State Correctional Officers Police Benevolent Association.

The union said in a press release that the 25-year veteran officer, whose name it did not provide, was attacked by inmate Robert Jones, 27, and suffered several lacerations to his upper and lower lips.

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The officer was taken to St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital, where he received stitches to his lips and the inside of his mouth, the union said.

The union said the officer was injured after intervening in a situation in which Jones was “acting irate and belligerent” and threatening to attack a female officer. The attack happened in a prison medical clinic where Jones was taken after the confrontation wit the female officer, the union said.

Jones, who is serving a three-year sentence in a Nassau County drug case, was placed in a “special housing unit” at the prison after assaulting the officer, the union said,

The union blamed the assault on the state’s “agenda to lessen the use of special housing units for disciplinary sanctions.”

“There is an inherent risk of in the duties of a correction officer,” Mike Mazzella, vice president of the union’s Mid-Hudson chapter, said in a written statement. “While our officers understand that, what is most troubling is the number of violent attacks committed by inmates on staff throughout the state. Each day our members put their lives on the line in order to keep our communities safe. Unfortunately (the policy) has emboldened the violent inmates.”

Anthony J. Annucci, the state’s acting commissioner of corrections, said in an email to the Freeman: “The safety of our employees is one of my primary focuses, and when a correction officer is hurt, as in this isolated incident on Monday at Fishkill, I remind everyone that any act of violence in a state prison will be aggressively investigated and, if warranted, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”